Most leaders are pretty good at adding things. There’s always room for another initiative, another “important” meeting, or some new process or tech that’s supposed to make everyone’s life easier.

Before long, the organization is carrying far more than anyone intended, and very little ever gets taken off the table. Sound familiar?

Leaders aren’t nearly as good at subtraction. That’s why one of Warren Buffett’s most famous observations still deserves attention, although perhaps for a reason different from what we’ve been giving it.

The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.

I’ve written about this Buffett quote before, usually in the context of protecting your time and focusing on what matters. But there’s another leadership lesson buried inside it that becomes more important the higher you climb.

When a CEO says yes to another priority, that decision doesn’t stay in the executive suite. It travels downstream.

Someone has to attend the meetings, create the deck, track the metrics, and somehow find room for the new initiative alongside everything else leadership approved last quarter and never officially killed.

Eventually, an organization can have 12 “top priorities,” which is corporate code for having no priorities at all.

This is where Buffett’s advice spells leadership discipline. Leadership is partly the job of deciding where those resources will not go.

Research on “initiative overload” found that companies struggle to kill projects even after they no longer support the strategy. Instead, executives keep adding initiatives, creating overload farther down the organization.

Source link